The State of the union

Four artists come together to deliver The State Of The Union, a pre-election exhibition offering reflections on contemporary America in the context of its relatively short history.

In 2016, the United States cast off its pretensions of innocent superiority, and with the shrill screeching of an angsty teenager, has lain bare its immaturity before the world. Awash in a churning sea of mainstream misinformation, the American populace is drowning, surfacing for an instant only to be beset by the squawking of self-identified social media seers. Unable to discern fact from fiction, America has fallen into emotional turmoil. Desperate to avoid disillusionment, the nation has cast aside the arcane tools of logic and morality to grasp at the apron strings of politicians whose rhetoric is based in the comforting narratives of a bygone era.

But beneath this fruitless frenzy, buried deep in a midden of soundbites and clickbait, lies the skeleton of the contemporary American experience, waiting to be reanimated in the pages of history as a coherent retrospective on the societal and economic extremity that has characterized the post-industrial age.

For the present, however, curator Allison Remy Hall and artists DISTORT, Lina Hsiao, Dominic Sansone, and Sam Pullin offer a small glimpse into the current realities of the heartland. These artists anchor their individual experiences to the greater political actualities of the nation, stripping away popular irreverence as they broadcast The State Of The Union through painting and installation.